Post by Emma Bryce

At the close of a UK heatwave, but with more hot weather on the way, here's a story I wrote for Dialogue Earth, where experts encourage critical thinking around heat pumps and AC as the default solution. These systems require refrigerants - and refrigerants leak, some with potentially huge global warming impacts. No one I spoke to was against heat pumps, but they did identify significant knowledge gaps about refrigerants that they say need to be filled, ideally before this technology becomes widespread. As one source cautioned: “The human enterprise is industrialised to the extent that we can actually change large infrastructure surprisingly quickly. That can be a great benefit for humanity, but it also can have impacts if it’s not done with proper considerations." https://lnkd.in/e2Pa6nNs